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New details of the ‘Espeto’ operation, one of the main police coups against drugs. On October 28, Carlos García Morales, alias ‘El Matador’, entered warehouse number 6 of the Naón (Siero) industrial estate. An old police acquaintance, he had disappeared from the investigators’ radar after he was arrested in 2011 in Medellín to serve a sentence for drug trafficking. At 12 noon on October 28, he was in a motorhome, a vehicle that due to his residence conditions cannot be searched without a court order, something convenient for his intentions. Ahead in another car was EIL, one of his partners, making sure there were no uniformed men on the road.

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They came from Galicia convinced that in that ship they would find 600 kilos of cocaine that they believed they had bought and had brought by boat. Little do they know that for months they have had agents following them closely, sitting at nearby tables in the restaurants they frequented, photographing them and identifying every person who came to their meetings. Entering that Siero ship means taking a hook that has been conveniently placed for it.

His idea was to collect the cocaine and distribute it, but there are infiltrated agents both among the Colombian gang that supplied them and among the alleged criminals they have recruited for the transfer. They have been playing for some time with the marked cards given to them by the Colombian police, the Central Organized Crime and Drug Unit (Udyco) of the National Police and the US Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), three bodies that showed cooperation and good work.

The detainees deny having anything to do with the weapons and ask to identify who gave them to the undercover agents

The drug traffickers took 600 kilos of the white powder out of Colombia by boat, but 300 nautical miles east of Barbados they fell into the trap. They delivered the merchandise to the crew of a luxury yacht, convinced that they would take it secretly to Spain. In reality, the yacht that she had was undercover US agents who transferred the cache to Puerto Rico.

Part of the drug was made available to the National Police to make a controlled delivery in Spain with which to catch buyers red-handed. On October 8, she landed in Madrid by commercial plane from Puerto Rico. In the warehouse and under police custody there was a container with eight seals, and inside 600 packages of cocaine. That is the material that is placed in the Asturian polygon waiting for ‘El Matador’ to arrive and put the balls in his caravan.

The qualitative leap lies in what also appeared on the ship. The agents describe it as “an arsenal of war, since it is about automatic weapons, disassembled parts of the same, rocket launchers or even explosive devices.” There are seven long weapons, one short, ten silencers, a box with grenades and detonators, 23 magazines with ammunition of various calibers, and six boxes with assorted ammunition. They also occupy 36 spray cans, two flashlights, two window breakers, bulletproof vests, a false mustache, four badges with the coat of arms of Spain, parks of different police forces and badges.

“We are facing an extraordinary arsenal of weapons: something unthinkable in Spain until now,” said the head of the Narcotics Brigade, Antonio Martínez Duarte. His men reflect in a statement “his suitability of him to commit what in the field of drug trafficking is known as ‘vuelcos’, that is, drug thefts from other drug traffickers.”

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«They are crimes directly connected to criminal types of drug trafficking, robbery with violence, kidnappings, injuries, crimes against life…However, they are crimes that do not come to light, since the victims are drug traffickers who prefer to resolve the situation by another way that is not legal, “they explain. “The ski masks, the luminous devices similar to those used by the official vehicles of the State Security Forces and Corps, the police clothing or the patches are indicative elements of the criminal intentions of the detainees,” they note.

The four detainees are being defended by Vox Legis Abogados, which denies any relationship between its clients and the arsenal and requests the annulment of the proceedings regarding the controlled delivery of the weapons.

According to the account of events made by the office headed by Asturian Francisco Miranda, during months of investigation the agents gathered evidence related to the drug, without seeking any comment on the weapons. Four days before the arrests is when ‘Sar’, an undercover agent in the ‘El Matador’ organization, receives a message through the Signal application, from a certain ‘Gustavo’, who asks him to send someone from his confidence to pick up “some toys”. ‘Birch’, another infiltrated agent, is in charge of that part; he goes to the agreed place and ‘Barbas’, an unidentified man, gives him the keys to a car. Inside was the armory that will appear on Siero’s ship.

The defense maintains that the controlled delivery of the weapons required additional authorization from the Prosecutor’s Office, and asks to identify ‘Gustavo’ and ‘Barbas’, who provided the weapons in this case.

2023-08-21 00:03:40
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